Will Rogers wryly noted, "God made man in His image and man has returned the favor."

Call it naturalism. Call it anthropomorphism. Call it idolatry. Call it what you will. The result of this spiritual inversion is we make a god who is about our size and looks an awful lot like us, only a little stronger, a little smarter, a little better. And most of our spiritual shortcomings stem from this fundamental mistake: thinking about God in human terms. We make God in our image, and as A. W. Tozer said in The Knowledge of the Holy, we’re left with a god who “can never surprise us, never overwhelm us, nor astonish us, nor transcend us.”

I live in a very small village in Alaska (57 people!) where I am the teacher/administrator to 14 students in grades K-7. For PE we went for a run, and much to their surprise, I beat them at my age (59). I told them at night I put on my Spider-Man costume to do my real job - keep law and order in Stony River.

"We don't have crime in Stony River!" they screamed as they tried to catch their breath!

"You're welcome!" I replied. 

Isn't that what we do with a god of our making? He keeps us safe and warm in our beds at night - but he's really like us with a Super Hero costume on.

Thomas Jefferson loved the teachings of Jesus. In fact, the author of the Declaration of Independence called them “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.” But Jefferson was also a child of the Enlightenment. He didn’t have a cognitive category for miracles, so Jefferson literally took a pair of scissors and cut them out of his King James Bible. It took him two or three nights. And by the time he was done, he had cut out the virgin birth, cut out the angels, cut out the Resurrection. Jefferson extracted every miracle, and the result was a book titled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, or what is commonly referred to as the Jefferson Bible.

And it's about seven or so pages - because when you take God out of the Bible, you are left with very little!

Hard to imagine, isn’t it? And something rises up within those of us who believe that the Bible is inspired by God. Part of us scoffs or scolds Jefferson, You can’t pick and choose. You can’t cut and paste. You can’t do that to the Bible.

You can't have a quilt Christianity!

When I was a young boy, I used to watch my mother, aunts, and grandmothers sit around and quilt. They could churn out a couple of quilts in a day when they got started. They took all the old clothes we no longer could wear, cut them into squares, and they would "pick and choose" which squares go into which space while they gossiped away.

But here’s the truth: while most of us can’t imagine taking a pair of scissors to the Bible and physically cutting verses out, we do exactly what Jefferson did. We ignore verses we cannot comprehend. We avoid verses we do not like. And we rationalize verses that are too radical.

Can I make a personal confession?

Sometimes I avoid the Bible (just like you do) because I know that I'm not quite living up to what I should. Whenever I’m reading the Bible and I come to a verse that I don’t fully understand or live up to, I find myself reading really fast or I put my brain into "intellectual mode"(is that what it really says? Isn't there another translation? etc.) I speed-read right past those verses. But then I slow it down when I come across verses I understand and obey. That’s human nature, isn’t it?

Here’s a lesson I’ve learned the hard way: when I come across a verse I want to read real fast, I probably need to read real slow!

So while we may not cut sections of the Bible out with a pair of scissors to create our "quilt Christianity," the end result is the same. We pick and choose the truths we want to accept. We become trapped by our own desire to justify ourselves. Our lives are limited to those things we can comprehend with our cerebral cortex - we make it intellectual instead of real to our lives. We end up in the cage of our own assumptions.

And the more assumptions we make, the smaller our cage becomes.

“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do commit murder, you have become a lawbreaker.” (James 2:10–11, NIV)

• In what areas are you picking and choosing what you want to believe about God or His Word?
• Are you reading God's Word - all of it - so you know what He really wants from you?
• Have you ever read through the Bible from Genesis to Maps? Why not start now? There are lots of free audio Bibles available if you need one!

Rejoicing, On the Victory Side!

Beau